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| Malawi Fanta Orange |
For most of my
friends, Christmas evokes images of things that, thanks to Hollywood, we
already are familiar with: installing and decorating Christmas trees, setting
up nativity cribs, roasting mush marrows over fires, drinking mulled wine/eggnog,
baking mince pies, ice skating with friends, singing Christmas carols,
strolling through Christmas markets, among others. When it was my turn to say
what I associate the most with Christmas, in a recent random conversation, I
blurted out an unfiltered answer, “Fanta!!!” My response elicited surprises and
I had to explain myself.
Although there
are vast differences in how different cultures celebrate Christmas, overeating
of special foods and drinking copious amounts of alcoholic or non-alcoholic
beverages seems universal. I have only been to one Christmas party where this
rule was an exception. It was actually in Cambodia where I learned the lesson of
‘always eat’ before going out to a dinner party. I went to a Christmas dinner hosted
by some Australian friends on an empty stomach, on the assumption that I would
waddle back home looking like I was about to give birth to twins. I ignored the
pretty little nibbles, which made several rounds because my stomach is
notoriously famous for filling up on starters before the real deal. In this
case however, the real stuff never showed up, the nibbles were the stars of the
night. I couldn’t wait to be done with the chit chat so could go home and raid
my fridge.
I like spending
Christmas in Malawi. Still, I can’t help being disappointed that I never seem
to be able to recapture the Christmas fever that used to grip me as a kid
living in the village. Today, being able to afford to eat on a daily basis all
the special treats (rice, chicken,
red meat, and of course Fanta!) that were only reserved for Christmas has
really diluted and spoiled the Christmas specialness if you ask me. In my old
days, the only time we ate really well for no apparent reason was when the
village men and their dogs went on a hunt into Funwe hills and Uncle Luke
brought an impala leg or a guinea fowl. Though many a times he came back empty
handed and on one occasion he came home on a make-shift stretcher groaning with
a hunting spear sticking out of his leg. Christmas in the main cities of Malawi
today means eating the same every-day food only in larger amounts. We drink the
same Carlsberg Green (Malawi national beer- don’t bother asking how a Danish
beer became a Malawian national beer) but in vast quantities to a point where people
get so intoxicated and drive straight through roundabouts or they stagger in
the middle of a busy street like the guy I almost run over on Christmas eve. In
Chantulo, my village, people drink kachasu
and stumble over maize ridges in an oblivious stupor trying to find their way
home. Morning after Christmas, it was not uncommon to find drunk men slumbering
peacefully under mango trees; their shirt and pair of trousers hanging from brunches
above.
Today, Christmas
is announced by the irritating Jingle Bells
on TV and in shopping malls. What really gets to me these days in Malawi are
green plastic conifers sagging under the weight of clumps of dusty cotton lint
in people’s living rooms. In a country that doesn’t even have a local word for
‘snow’!! I find the whole thing ridiculous! Thank God none of this nonsense has
yet caught on in Chantulo Village. As a kid I knew Christmas was around the
corner when my grandmother took out and dusted old Christmas cards from her cardboard
suitcase. She would tie two long threads across our tiny living room each from
one corner to the diagonal corners so that the two threads would meet in the
middle forming a cross. Then she would take out all her lovingly stored old and
new Christmas cards and hang them over the threads so that our living room
resembled Tibetan prayer flags. Another cue was when all the ‘cool’ kids who
lived in Blantyre returned to the village for Christmas school break wearing
their spotless jojeti (georgette) dresses.
They had, which they liberally displayed, an underwear for each day of the week
too, while we washed our one – if there was one at all- every night and wear it
in the morning; dry or not. I didn’t understand why everybody fawned over them.
They couldn’t even hold a pail of water on their head properly. Their heads
wobbled uncontrollably under the weight of the pail that they got home from the
well completely drenched. But even carrying a pail of water in such ungainly manner
was somehow cool too. And of course we had to put up with their disgustingly
fascinating stories of city life.
On a typical Christmas
day I usually got a new dress in a nondescript colour so dust, mango, and gravy
stains wouldn’t show on it. And the fabric so thick it lasted two/three years
of continuous wear. In this way the new Christmas dress becomes a Sunday dress,
while the previous Sunday one became an everyday dress, and the old everyday
one got retired and passed on to a younger kid. I remember vividly one pale
embroidered lavender dress that my mum bought for me once. The thick polyester
fabric was so heavy, the dress must have weighed a tonne. I remember it very
well, because the dress wouldn’t just wear out. I wore it till I grew out of
it, then my cousin inherited it, then another cousin, then her sister. At least
five girls wore that dress and it still was going strong only the delicate
lavender was the colour of muddy water. New underwear were treasures only
provided in a good year and in a really good year, I also got a pair of new
leather shoes. All the little boys my age got suited up in new pairs of brown
or black shorts with elastic waistbands to accommodate kwashiorkor extended
bellies. The elastic usually lasted a month and then the shorts were held
together by a string of palm-leaf harvested daily. Unless mended, the seams
that held together and formed the shape for the legs gave away within the six months
of daily wear. The shorts were then worn sideways like a skirt with slits along
the thighs revealing scratched ash-grey buttocks- like the colour of elephant
skin- when running.
Although we got
new clothes, we had to find our own Christmas spending money. So weeks leading
to Christmas we engaged in serious child-labour and weeded other people’s maize
fields to earn some coins. After school, my friends and I took our little hoes and
for three hours the sun baked our scrawny backs while we weeded or raised the
maize ridges that had become flattened by the rains.
Christmas day
started with scones and super sweet milk-tea; a big change from the usual maize porridge. I am using the
word ‘scone’ here because that’s what we called the yeasty doughy bread made in
a scone shape. On a good Christmas, the scones were smothered with thick layers
of stoko (Stork Margarine). The milk
came straight from the drippy udders of Ambulasita’s goats across the village
and milk delivery was in a used Fanta bottle cork-screwed with a maize cob.
After tea and a
bath, I was allowed to put on my new dress and go to church for a Christmas
service with grandma. While the preacher man was going on and on about Jesus
being born in our hearts, all the kids were pre-occupied with checking out each
other’s new dresses and of course dreaming of all the food waiting for us. For
obvious reasons, unless someone decided to speak in tongues, Christmas service
was one of the shortest services. It was done by 10:00am. Once home, it was
time to take off the new dress, put on an ordinary one and getting about the
business of chasing and killing a chicken that would sate our huge Christmas
appetite. Grandma knew which chicken was the fattest. I was an expert chicken killer
with no qualms whatsoever. I probably was the fastest thing on two legs in my
household. Killing a chicken was a one-man, or rather, a one-child job. If you
invite friends to help with the chicken chasing, there was a high probability
that they find every excuse in the book to stick around and help with the
devouring of the chicken. Uncle Daniel taught me how to kill a chicken. You hold
down the wings and its feet with your two feet before slicing its neck and
letting the chicken bleed to death. Holding it down is key otherwise the
chicken takes off and even flies without its head, which means you would have
to walk through brambles to retrieve it.
Annatto paste
from achiote tree (lipstick tree), shallots, tomato waphwetekere (cherry tomato), and salt were the only
condiments added to the chicken simmering in the smoky clay pot. In the
meantime, and usually outside the kitchen- we only had one hearth place- rice
was bubbling flavoured with groundnut flour (mpunga wachikonyera). It was my favourite. Christmas day was also
the one day in the year that the unavoidable vegetables or lentils did not
touch our lips. Goat meat cooked the previous day only required reheating. I
hated fatty goat meat. It was so hard to steal. Once cooled, the pale yellow fat
congealed and glued all the pieces together that it was very obvious if a piece
or two were missing. The best time to gobble up a few pieces was when the meat
was just warm enough not to burn my mouth but hot enough for the grease and meat
to resettle without the tell-tale signs. The challenge of course was always how
to do it without getting caught. Once the cooking is done, we all sat down in a
circle on woven palm-leaf mats to eat our Christmas meal. Christmas was the
only occasion where I could eat a whole drum stick and chicken feet wrapped
with cleaned chicken intestines too!! Let me pause for a moment and explain a
little about food portions in Malawi. In a typical village with a household of
about five people, one scrawny chicken lasts at least two days or four meals
even to this very day. Two small drum sticks can easily feed five people!!! So
gorging on an entire drumstick was, well, Christmas!
Around 2:00pm, while
the adults rolled on woven mats in a food coma, I was allowed to wear my new
dress again to go to the village centre, Luwadzi. This is where young people
congregated on Christmas afternoon. The village centre had a road market, a bus
stop, and was littered with mud-house tearooms and a few tin-roofed shops. This
was our downtown, where things were happening and where people caught up with
the latest village gossip. It was also the best place for mzungu spotting, a mysterious people who drove past on their way to
the Lake. A people who, when they stopped to buy fruits, we crowded around for
a better look but when they stopped us to ask for directions and you happened
to be alone, you run away as fast as you could for the fear of being abducted. Tearooms
around Luwadzi, like ‘Mfiti Idzafanso
Tiyi Rumu,’ were popular with retirees, who spent their pensions drinking
tea and scones. Tea time bore little resemblance to the British high tea from
which we inherited our fondness for milk tea. There were no dainty tea cups and
delicate scones with jam and cream served in summery rooms. The tea rooms of my
village were gloomy, sometimes window less one-roomed huts. Rheumy eyed men, I
never saw a woman, sat on wooded benches nursing large metal tea cups. A large
grubby and beat-up aluminium teapot made rounds refilling the equally grimy cups.
On Christmas
day, the village centre transformed into a seething sea of brightly clad young people
wearing their best clothes. It was a place to see and be seen, although one
could never really pinpoint what exactly was happening there. Girls with
glistening hair spikes straightened by hot stones giggled while checking out the
boys. Every year a few girls nursed watery waggling blisters on their foreheads or necks from accidents with hair-straightening hot-stones- stones
that were heated over coals then raked through girl’s hair to straighten kinky corkscrews.
Boys’ struts were reduced to heavy clomps like ungainly ducks. They were
wearing shoes! A drastic change from the normal barefoot or the usual nkhwaila (shoes made out of used car
tyres). You can imagine the results when you suddenly squeeze and confine thick
calloused toes that are normally allowed to grow in every direction throughout
the year into an unyielding pair of leather shoes several sizes too big/small. Women
wore standard plastic Bata ‘Sofia’ shoes, which stretches to accommodate
straying toes. People shuffled around holding, or rather showing off their
Fantas. I too among the crowds, used my hard earned coins to buy a bottle of Fanta,
and a packet of biscuits with purple custard cream. Again it should be
understood here that consuming Fanta was the ultimate luxury. It was reverently
drunk during Christmas or, as is still the case with the poor, only offered to
people who are very sick. This one Fanta had to last the entire afternoon. The
pretense here was that you had made enough money to buy and drink Fanta all
afternoon. You certainly didn’t want to be seen empty handed and presumed too
poor. The reality, however, was that most of us only had enough money for one
Fanta. Besides, one had to stretch the hard earned coins to New Year
celebrations too. The trick was to let the Fanta just touch your lips, but
never actually drink it. Those with more money to spare swaggered around with three
bottles of Fanta and maybe a Coca-Cola too in their hands. The aimless back and
forth, or more like limping by now, continued until dark when we could finally
gulp the now tepid and flat Fanta.
As dusk was
settling in, a gumba gumba (radiogram)
started and men shifted from the trading centre to the village bar and switch
from drinking Fanta to Chibuku- an
opaque beer. The radiogram worked on a similar principle as a Jukebox, but
instead of putting the coin in the box, the patron paid the owner of the radiogram
to play his favourite song from a record, usually it was from such artists like
The Mahotella Queens, John Chibadula, or The Soul Brothers, etc. Dancing was
serious business and an opportunity to show off dancing moves. Men peeled off
their shirts, kicked off their cumbersome shoes, and their bodies twisted and
rocked to the vibes from the speakers. Rivulets of sweat run down glistering contorting
backs while our oily hair and eyelashes became caked in brown dust kicked off
by frenzied dancers’ bare feet. The thing with radiograms though; was that only
the patron who paid for the song was allowed to dance. The rest, unless
invited, could only stand around and admire or laugh at the dancing moves. No
matter how good the song was or how desperate you were to dance, you didn’t. You
did not even nod your head to the beat. If the buyer of the song caught you
dancing to his song, there would be trouble.
Before you knew
it, Christmas was over and it was time to head home; one didn’t stay out too
late at night in the village. The roads were pitch black and we were always
warned of the witches and spirits lurking and waiting on certain junctions to
slap unsuspecting people with invisible hands or something nonsensical like
that. And certainly Christmas day was not a day to stay out too late; you may
just miss the remaining chicken stew. We hurried home in little groups holding
our now empty Fanta bottles and the now dust-caked new dresses.
